John oral history transcript, December 14, 2016

Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 1
CACHE VALLEY DRUG COURT
ORAL HISTORY
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee: John
Place of Interview: Logan Library, Logan, Utah
Date of Interview: December 14, 2016
Interviewer: Jennifer Duncan, Andrew Dupree, Randy Williams
Recordist: Randy Williams
Recording Equipment: Marantz Professional: PMD66, Shure omnidirectional mic
Transcription Equipment used: Express Scribe with PowerPlayer foot pedal.
Transcribed by: Susan Gross, 05 January 2017
Transcript Proofed by: Randy Williams, 16 January 2017
Brief Description of Contents: John, a graduate of drug court, speaks about his experiences with addiction, and how addiction has affected his life, and the lives of his family. He discusses the benefits of drug court, as well as some of the challenges.
Reference: JD: Jennifer Duncan
RW: Randy Williams
AD: Andrew Dupree
J: John
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as “uh” and false starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcript. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets.
TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
[00:01]
JD: Okay; so this is Jennifer Duncan; I am with Andrew and Randy, interviewing John here in the Logan Public Library, for the Cache Valley Utah Drug Court Oral History Project. And it is December 14th, 2016.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 2
J: Hi [laughs].
AD: Hi John.
So to start, could you tell us about your background: where you’re from, maybe a little bit about your childhood.
J: Like you just said before, I was born in New Jersey. I’m 44, so I was born in ’72. I grew up with both of my parents until I was (I think) about eight, something like that. I wasn’t from any kind of – I didn’t have like a real horrible home life. I don’t have like a big, you know, sad story or anything like that; it was decent.
They got separated. I lived with my mother until I was about 12 and I started getting a little out of control and my father said, “You know what? You’re coming to live with me.”
I think it says that here – yeah, I started doing drugs about then: started drinking and smoking pot, and stuff like that. And almost immediately. I don’t know if it was due to doing those things, or it was my attitude in general about everything, but almost immediately, you know, my grades went down, everything like that.
[02:00]
My dad wasn’t having that; he took me and I moved down to about a half hour south of Clifton, New Jersey, to a town called Metuchen. And you know, I went to high school and everything there; I went to the end of my junior high and high school there.
I always – it says what my ethnicity is – I’m three-quarters Italian, a little Irish and a little German. And all my family that I knew growing up was Italian, so.
You know, basically all through high school what I did was I played some sports, but for the most part I’ve been a musician my whole life. I was already playing in bands; I was playing clubs when I was a junior in high school. We were already playing in like New York City, and stuff like that.
JD: What instrument did you play?
RW: What do you play?
JD: [Laughs]
J: I play – I guess my best instrument would be bass guitar; but I play bass, I play guitar, I play drums, I play piano, do some singing (my range isn’t what it was when I was younger). Yeah, so I’ve always done that. That’s probably (unfortunately) the most consistent things I’ve ever done.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 3
I was saying this to Andrew today probably – if you ask me anything, I know most about music and probably drugs (unfortunately). But that’s been a part of my life my entire life.
Yeah, and throughout high school that’s what I did: my drug addiction progressed. I think it’s pretty typical, you know, of any drug addict; I don’t think my story’s that unique.
I think some people – like some, I don’t want to say “normal” people, but let’s say you know, you guys aren’t drug addicts. If you did something and you started, you know, feeling high or feeling really drunk, you would start feeling like you were, you know, losing control of yourself, right? That’s what I would imagine, anyway. Like, “Something’s wrong.”
And I think a drug addict immediately feels like a comfort, and feels like they’re starting to gain control; so I think like drugs work for a drug addict. And at some point after, you know, it progresses I lose control and all of a sudden it doesn’t work anymore, and it becomes a necessity.
[04:50]
That’s pretty much my background, as far as where I’m from and what I did, and when I started doing drugs, and all that.
AD: And what sort of drugs –
J: Have I done in my life?
AD: Have you done, or what became the problem drug (or drugs)?
J: My drug of choice, inevitably, became heroin.
AD: Okay.
J: I started doing that when I was about 18, or so (18 or 19).
JD: How did you come to Cache Valley?
J: Oh. I was in New Jersey, and my first wife (she was my girlfriend at the time), her father had a house and lived out in Las Vegas. And so she went out there, and then I went out there a little while after. One thing lead to another, we stayed together for a while, we broke up. And I met my [laughing] next ex-wife I met in Las Vegas, and she’s originally from here.
JD: Okay.
J: So yeah, we came to visit one time. It was around Easter, and there was some kind of family reunion; and we decided to move up here. Yeah. Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 4
AD: So going back to your background and upbringing a little bit – so you’re Italian; you said the family that you knew was Italian?
J: Um-hmm.
AD: Italians are generally known for having pretty close-knit families, is that correct? Or can you kind of tell us how that – the Italian family dynamic – how that affected, or played into your drug use?
J: I don’t know that it –
AD: If [??] I guess?
J: Yeah, I don’t know that it played into my drug use. And I’ll tell you this about a close-knit family: I think things (inevitably) with religion, with culture, I think they change. I think through generations – like you’ll notice, like you’re LDS here. The generation now that’s growing up Mormon (or LDS, whatever you’d like to call the religion), they’re not as, I don’t know, strict about life, and things as the generation before. And it’s probably so for the generation before that – just like same with the Italians and the Roman Catholics – it’s the same thing.
[07:38]
I noticed that the older people in my family did have that real, tight-knit Italian thing; but after my grandparents died, I feel like that kind of fell off, and it wasn’t as much like that.
I did drink for the first time, though, at one of their parties, because they did always have an open bar– so I guess I didn’t use drugs because of the culture, but at the same time I was sneaking some (I think) Jack and Cokes or something like that [laughing] when I was eight years old. They were pissed; they were pissed off.
I was running around; I think my parents just got separated, and I’m drinking. And I remember it too, and I’m slurring, talking to people. They wanted to throw me in the back room. Yeah, they were pretty mad.
AD: So you went from New Jersey, to Las Vegas, to Cache Valley – is that correct?
J: Yeah, I lived in New York City, too, a couple times in between all that. But –
AD: Okay.
J: Yeah.
AD: So was your drug use continuous throughout, in every city?
J: Yeah, yeah. Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 5
AD: So you were staying –
J: I always had periods where I tried to – I’ll say I’ve been fighting addiction, since it became a problem I’ve been fighting it, do you know what I mean?
So when I moved out to Las Vegas – I went out there and I think I was just drinking a little bit. And I (inevitably) you know, got acclimated to my surroundings. I think I was going to some NA meetings when I first got there, but obviously I started using again. And that’s also where I kind of got into the meth world a bit too, even though that never became my drug of choice, I still had some years with that too.
[09:50]
AD: Now with heroin being your drug of choice, did you also have problems or use with pharmaceutical pills, and opiates?
J: Absolutely; absolutely, quite a bit. Quite a bit.
I would say my drug of choice – it is heroin, but probably for like for a long time, pretty consistently I did speedballs, which is cocaine and heroin (probably for a good 12 years straight).
AD: And what was that experience like – doing speedballs?
J: It’s – you guys want me to tell you like that actual, like you know, what it would feel like to me, doing it?
AD: Because for those who don’t know, a speedball is cocaine, and heroin –
J: Um-hmm.
AD: At the same time.
J: Um-hmm.
AD: It’s killed many celebrities.
J: Um-hmm.
AD: It’s known for being incredibly euphoric, but also extremely dangerous –
J: Right.
AD: Because one is an upper and the other is a downer.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 6
J: I actually believe, because of the – I think cocaine is probably just as dangerous to shoot as heroin: it could blow your heart out. It’s just an intense rush, like you feel that cocaine – there’s no drug in the world (and I’m not getting off topic, I’m just going to say this): there’s no drug in the world that’s more addictive while you’re doing it. (Not physically addictive, like heroin where you need it the next day, if you don’t have it you’re going to be sick and you can’t do anything.)
Cocaine, while you’re doing it, is incredibly addictive. All you want to do is more cocaine, more cocaine, more cocaine. You could have $100 – it will be gone; if you have $300, it will be gone; if you have $800, it will be gone. You’ll just keep – you know, you can’t stop.
[12:03]
But when you do it with heroin, you get that euphoric feeling of the cocaine, and you almost hear like – people describe it as trains [makes rumbling sound], like that. But you don’t have that wicked craving, because the heroin – after that cocaine comes down, the heroin takes over, and you’re comfortable.
So it is dangerous.
AD: So have you ever had, I guess, any close calls with, you know?
J: Overdosing?
AD: Yes.
J: I’m really lucky; I’m really lucky like that. Truthfully, there’s not many people that – I don’t know that many people that did heroin on and off as long as me and they’re still alive; to be honest with you, I really don’t. Most of them are dead.
Have I any close calls? I have one time in – actually in Las Vegas. And this isn’t like me at all, I started getting a slight [coughs] – excuse me. I started getting a slight habit again, and I was drinking and I got overwhelmingly depressed; like it was the weirdest thing. I got like this depression, I was like, “I don’t want to live anymore.”
And I wound up saying, “The hell with it.” And I said, “I’m out of here.” I looked up at the sky, and I ate all my – I had a Rottweiler, and he was epileptic. And I ate all his Phenobarbitals. And I’ve never been suicidal in my life, never been suicidal after that.
But it was just a thing, and it’s actually really common with somebody like with a slight habit and trying to come off heroin, you can get an overwhelming depression, like your body starts – it doesn’t produce those endorphins anymore, and your testosterone levels are really low.
[14:23] Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 7
And yeah, it was a weird thing. But I made sure I left like two Phenobarbitals for the dog in the morning, [laughing] so he didn’t have a seizure.
But I woke up. I guess I was kind of out of it and my ex found me. I don’t know what they did, but I was on the stretcher when I came to, and all I saw was like everybody, you know, in the neighborhood looking. It was kind of embarrassing, you know?
But other than that – because that was on purpose, right? I was back east and me and my friend (my friend, Jimmy) – we used to be in a band together too, and we did a lot of drugs together. We had some money, and we got a bunch of drugs. And I think I was telling you this – we were doing speedballs all day.
And we were at his house in Staten Island, New York. And it’s one o’clock in the morning. And to this day I think about it, and I think he was insane: he’s like, “Alright, I’ve got to go to work.” And I’m thinking to myself, “How the hell are you going to work? It’s one in the morning, we’ve been doing like,” really, I mean we were high.
And he goes to work and I do another speedball, and it’s like at one-thirty in the morning. And the next thing I knew, I was on the floor and it was four o’clock (four a.m.). And the only thing I could think is I went out, and I think the fact that I did do a speedball (on that particular circumstance) probably saved me, because the coke probably kept me from completely, like my respiratory shutting down, or whatever.
But other than that, I’m not what you would call an “O.D.-er.” I think some people are more susceptible to overdose from opiates than others, you know? I’ve saved – I don’t want to say “saved,” because I was doing drugs with them, but over a dozen people I’ve had to bring back from going out on heroin; breathe for them.
[16:43]
AD: What do you mean by that?
J: I mean, they do a shot of heroin and fall back, and start turning white, lips start turning blue. And you either got to do something, or –. I’m not the type of person to leave somebody there and go about my business. So you breathe for them; some people do other things: throw them in the bathtub (I’ve heard), you know?
AD: Cold shower?
J: Yeah; ice down the pants, whatever.
But your respiratory system is shutting down, that’s what happens. So the logical thing, I mean if you just make it common sense, you breathe for them. And I’ve never lost anybody doing that; but it’s happened more times than I’d like to, you know, that I’d like to admit. A couple close people – it makes you panic, you know? [Inaudible] Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 8
AD: So you’ve spoke quite a bit about music being an important influence in your life. Has the music culture that you were in – how has that affected, or played into your drug use?
J: [Laughs]
AD: Is the music culture synonymous with drugs?
J: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It doesn’t have to be, but it absolutely is. Just the lifestyle that surrounds it, and even with your hallucinogens. Anybody that’s done hallucinogens will tell you that it can be almost a spiritual experience listening to music. You’ve heard the expression you see sounds and hear colors, and it really is. I did a lot of that when I was young too; a lot of acid, and things like that.
[19:01]
But I think – the only thing I think, and I joke about this a lot (like I’ve spoken in NA meetings and stuff like that), and I joke around. And you always hear the expression, “You never heard anybody say, ‘When I grow up I want to be a junkie,’” right?
But I almost – looking back, I almost did. I almost did want to be that, because I wanted to be a rock star, and I wanted to be that – like everything that comes along with being a rock star, right? So I almost did; I mean I wanted to be a rock star, but I kind of almost wanted to be a junkie. So I got half of it right [laughs].
But yeah.
AD: And so when was your first involvement with law enforcement as a result of your drug use?
J: When I think about it, I have never gotten in trouble in my life where it didn’t relate (a little bit) to drugs or alcohol. So my first arrest was right at 18, and it was possession of alcohol under the legal age. I think they call it, whatever – minor –
AD: Minor in possession.
J: Here. Yeah, so that was my first. Yeah, so 18; and then consistently through my life.
AD: And were these arrests or run-ins with the cops, were these for possession charges? Or were these maybe a result of your addiction, you know? Did it involve theft, or you know, trying to feed your habit?
J: So far, all of the above [laughs] that you’ve mentioned. I’ve had anything from violent charges, to thefts, to possessions, distributions; yeah.
AD: So I guess how many children do you have? Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 9
J: I have three biological, and one that I call my son (even though he’s my stepson). I raised him and he doesn’t know his biological father. So four.
AD: So how has your drug use and troubles with the law – how has that affected your children?
[21:53]
J: Well it’s affected them.
I’ll tell you what, my oldest son (it was from my first marriage) – I was always in his life, in and out, in and out. Because me and his mother separated and divorced when he was just a baby. And I was in and out of his life.
When (I think) he was roughly 12 (it was 2009) – that’s about the age he was, anyway – I went back to a rehab. I went to this rehab in Florida. And he decided (it wasn’t his mom saying) – I don’t know if he was embarrassed, which is understandable, you know what I’m saying? What do you tell people like, “Oh yeah, my father is in jail,” or, “My father is in rehab because he’s doing drugs again.” I can see that being embarrassing, and I could see it, you know – he’s in your life.
And we do – we were really, really close; we had just a natural kind of bond, you know. Everybody says, you know, “You love all your children the same.” And to a degree you do, but you always – I don’t know, you have different connections with different people. Like you know, my daughter right now, I’m super, super close with my daughter.
And we had that kind of connection. And so he didn’t talk to me anymore. And actually, February of this year is the first time I talked to him since then (in 2009). So in his case, that affected him a lot.
Daniel, the one I raised – he’s 21. And he’s getting in a little trouble; he’s not an addict like I was. It’s a shame though, he’s super, super, super smart and you know, he doesn’t. I don’t know – my addiction affected him because he’s been through a lot of different things because of, you know, the way I lived, and whatever it was (being locked up, or moving a lot). It’s just not real stable, you know?
[24:25]
I think he – it’s such a weird thing, because I regret (obviously) a lot of things, I do. Everyone says, “Well you shouldn’t regret anything.” I do regret a lot of things, but at the same time, I don’t know. I also, if I didn’t go through the things I went through I wouldn’t be the same person I am. I don’t know.
I have a good relationship with him. He loves me, respects me; but he’s been through a lot because of it.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 10
And I think as it goes down – like my son, Anthony, is 14; my daughter just turned 10 (her name is Savanna). I think each one of them – I think my periods of clean time in their life have been longer.
I have had some patches, you know, where I’ve been gone. And obviously they had to deal with me and their mom separating, getting back together, separating, getting back together periods, and jail, periods of me being in my addiction.
But I think they’ve been affected, but they’ve been affected a little bit less; a little bit less (but nonetheless, still affected), you know?
JD: That first son that you said you just re-established contact with in February.
J: Um-hmm?
JD: Had you already started drug court when you re-established that relationship?
J: I was done with drug court; I was done with drug court already.
JD: Okay.
J: Yeah. I actually was done – I finished drug court in January 2014.
JD: And when did you start drug court?
J: I think it was June 2012; I think June, somewhere along those lines.
JD: So it’s about 18 –
J: I did about 18 months – 17 or 18 months.
JD: That’s pretty speedy.
J: Yeah, I didn’t have any sanctions.
JD: Uh-huh.
J: Anything like that.
JD: Um-hmm.
[26:35]
J: Yeah. I think drug court is a lot easier if you’re not trying to do drugs while you’re on it.
[Laughter] Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 11
J: A lot.
JD: Uh-huh?
J: Yeah.
RW: Tell us about your involvement in drug court.
J: I’ll tell you this, when I first got drug court, I really thought I was just going to prison, to be honest with you. I had a possession charge, distribution as well: distribution of heroin.
JD: Um-hmm.
J: The task force and the – what is it, that would be the county attorney?
AD: Prosecutor? District Attorney?
J: Well it was the prosecutor, but the main – the boss – would be the county attorney, I guess?
JD: I think.
J: Yeah, whatever.
AD: Deputy – what is it?
JD: District Attorney?
J: Yeah, something like that.
AD: Right, right.
J: Whatever, yeah [laughs]. They did not want me to have drug court; they did not want me to have drug court. Typically, what people observe when they are having people in jail, they would observe like three times. I think I observed ten times. They kept telling me, “Come back. Come back.”
The last time I went to observe, Judge Willmore said, “I’m sorry, John,” you know – I mean they had me write letters, all kinds of stuff. And he said, “Sorry, they said no.” And my lawyer wasn’t there, but then right as they said that, Shannon Demler–
Oh, was I not?
RW: It’s fine.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 12
J: Oh, yeah. He came in and he heard them say that. And he started (literally, I’ve never seen him like that) – he started –
JD: That was your attorney?
J: Yeah.
JD: Uh-huh.
J: Yeah, he started screaming at him. He said, “What do you mean no?” And the prosecutor said, “Well I asked him,” and he said, “That’s why you can’t take no for an answer.”
[28:38]
Anyway, he went and talked to them, and he said, “Come back next week.” He went and talked to them, and I went to court that following Tuesday morning. They said, “Yeah, you got drug court.”
JD: So you sound like you were really motivated to want that program?
J: Well –
JD: How did you know about it, because we’ve heard that some people aren’t even aware of drug court.
J: Oh, I knew about drug court since I lived in Las Vegas.
JD: Oh.
J: That’s when I first (that I knew about it) when it first started.
But I don’t know if I was – how can you not be, I mean, motivated? I mean, you’re in jail, you don’t know how long you’re going to be sitting in jail. I was at a point, though, when I was in jail that I was okay if I got drug court. I was okay if I went to [??], I was okay if I went to prison. I knew I had to just stop doing what I was doing. So I was kind of just okay to do whatever at that point.
But everyone was trying to – everyone was getting drug court. And I thought I would do way better in drug court, and I think it would be better for me than going to prison at that point, because I was pretty sure I wanted to do the right thing, you know?
So you asked me what my involvement was. I’ll tell you what, when they finally gave me drug court I got out. And I didn’t use, but I still wanted to kind of live the way I was living. So the first few months I was doing some things that probably weren’t right, and I wasn’t going to that many meetings. But I was still getting by, and I was paying them off. [Paying for the programs.] Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 13
And something clicked (I don’t know what) and I said, “You know what? I better stop doing all this crap, and I better,” I knew myself bought into the 12-step programs; some people do, some people don’t. I think it works for some people, and for some people it doesn’t. I knew I had to get back into Narcotics Anonymous and do that. So I really did.
[31:07]
I really did it full bore. I took drug court really seriously – as far as all the appointments went, I didn’t miss any of them. I got really active in the NA home groups. I was active in the groups that they had in drug court. I think pretty quickly (with like maybe ten months clean at that point) I was the GSR (which is the group service representative for the home group).
RW: Can you tell us about –
JD: What does that mean?
RW: Yeah [laughs].
J: A GSR basically (AA or NA, but I’m going to just say NA, because that’s what I was in) has – you have a home group. All the NA meetings that are in town, each of those meetings – like a person that’s going to NA, if they want to really be active, they pick a home group, okay? So back then my home group was at Hungry for Recovery, where they did the breakfast on Saturdays. And I got really involved in that.
But now that’s the home group level. After the home group level (where all the meetings are), you have area. This area is northern Utah area in Narcotics Anonymous. So the GSR for the home group (is a group service representative) once a month reports to area, and there’s a meeting for area.
If people are voted in for different positions, or if there’s by-laws that are getting changed, or if you know, the home group has anything they want to bring up to area, that service representative goes back and forth.
JD: So that’s all a volunteer organization?
[33:09]
J: Yes.
JD: Right?
J: Yeah.
JD: Yeah; and so that’s just kind of the structural apparatus – Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 14
J: Um-hmm.
JD: That makes the whole thing?
J: Yeah; and see after area, there’s region – after region, I think there’s a U.S. now, but and then there’s world. And there’s conventions for each of those.
JD: Are you still involved in that –
J: Um-hmm.
JD: Structure?
J: Yeah, I’m still involved in Narcotics Anonymous. I’m not as involved as I was when I got clean that time, only because I really believe [laughs] – I don’t know if this is people in general, but I think drug addicts lack balance. (I know I do, anyway – I shouldn’t speak for everybody). But I really do. I obsess over one thing, and whether it’s NA, whether it’s music, whether it’s lifting weights, whether it’s a girl – anything like that – I obsess over it.
And this time around I’m really trying to have some balance. And I do do NA, and most of my friends are people in NA. But I also – I work, I spend a lot of time with my kids. I have another music project I’m in. I’m trying to have some balance; yeah.
AD: So you’ve had quite a bit of involvement with NA (from what we’ve discussed in the past) –
J: Um-hmm.
AD: You’ve had some involvement with what they call the Recovery Café, with yourself and your ex-wife?
J: Yeah.
AD: Could you tell us about that?
J: Well basically there’s that building over on Tenth, behind – you know where I’m talking about? Behind Walgreen’s, yeah? That’s where the Hungry for Recovery met, and there’s the girl (I don’t need to mention any names) that is in that home group that knew the guy that owns that building. And he (coincidentally) was involved with AA (or Al-Anon, one or the other), and she convinced him (at a good price) to let us have this out of the morning meeting there. So that’s how we got into that building.
[35:40]
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 15
And then me and my ex wound up getting back together at that point, and we came up with the idea of seeing if we couldn’t start a clubhouse, you know, a clean (or sober, however you want to say it) clubhouse. And I don’t know, we did; we opened it up.
It wound up being too expensive for us to keep, and then I wound up having surgery, she wound up having surgery. So what we did is we just inevitably turned it over to a board. So now it’s ran by a board of people.
JD: And that’s what they call the Recovery Café?
J: Um-hmm. Yeah, we called it the clubhouse, I think, then; but now it’s the Recovery Café, yeah.
JD: So is that a non-profit organization, if it’s run by [??].
J: Yeah, I’m sure they have it set up as a non-profit now; yeah. Even if you owned it you could set it up as a non-profit.
JD: Um-hmm.
J: But, um-hmm.
RW: How does that work, when there’s some sanctions against (in drug court) interacting with folks that –
J: Okay.
RW: How does the Recovery Café work?
JD: [Inaudible] [laughs]
J: Okay. First of all, if you’re in drug court and you go to a meeting, right, you can’t get in trouble for associating if you’re at a meeting and there’s other people from drug court there. It can get a little tricky, because can you get into trouble for getting a ride home?
JD: Sure.
J: Or something like that? Of course; of course. But I guess if they wanted to, as far as just hanging out at the café – I guess if they wanted to, and the cops came in there, they could say, “You know what? You guys are hanging out.” But they don’t do that.
I think it’s counter-productive; I think if they did that, it would be very, very counter-productive. All I did was associate (the entire time I was on drug court) – and I believe I’ve told Willmore in [laughs] the lunch with the judge thing.
[38:00] Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 16
I think that if there’s one of the things that they should change; but it’s really tricky for them to change it, but associating with the other people on drug court saved my life, really.
Those are the people that they were going through –I think if you’re hanging out with people that have the same goals as you and not the people that are trying to just beat the system the entire time (because you’re going to get that). You’re going to get it – inevitably that happens, you know; probably more than 50% of the time. They’re going to be, you know, drinking on a Thursday and they know they’re not getting tested until Monday, that kind of thing. But associating with people that are doing the same thing you’re doing, and trying to stay clean, and trying to build a good life I think it’s important, you know? I really do.
I’d like to believe – I could have just been lucky, but I like to believe that they didn’t mess – they weren’t going out of their way to catch people associating in that kind of manner. Like I used to hang out with a girl on drug court, and I seriously – we hung out almost every, single day: drove around, did whatever. We even started the Thursday night meeting. (There was no Thursday night meeting, we started that).
And I’ve never gotten any (partial luck), but I never got in any trouble. But people hanging out, smoking spice in garages, you know, they inevitably do get in trouble. I don’t know.
AD: So if you could make suggestions to the current drug court, or perhaps students at the university who might be thinking about going into social work, or –
J: Um-hmm?
AD: Law enforcement –
J: Um-hmm?
[40:08]
AD: So is that something you would suggest, that maybe the associations should be relaxed? But as you said, it’s –
J: It’s tricky, right?
AD: Tricky.
J: Right? Because you’re telling people, “Yeah, you can associate,” but you know, two drug addicts that aren’t trying to stay clean, associating, is not going to turn into something good, right?
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 17
And that also happens with, you know, relationships. Like people meet in drug court and they start hanging out; I’ve seen it work out, but for the most part it doesn’t. For the most part whatever your disease is attack each other, [laughing] however you want to describe it. And they get in trouble.
That’s what a lot of the associations are with girls and guys, right?
Yeah; I would think maybe do it as you go up in phases, maybe work that buddy system thing out a little bit more, because they had it in effect – do you know what I’m talking about?
JD: No.
J: I even got some paperwork (when I was in drug court) given to me by the POs; now you could pick somebody and say, okay (for example) Andrew was in drug court and I was in there longer than him, right? So I’m on Phase 4, he’s on Phase 1 or 2. We have a piece of paper saying, you know, he could go with me to meetings, or we could do some step work together, and we could hang out without getting in any trouble. They had that implemented, but at the same time they really didn’t do it, because I got that paperwork and they never followed through about any of it.
JD: Yeah – have you ever seen that implemented with anyone else? Because I have never heard of that.
[42:09]
J: A couple of people at the same time as me got that paperwork. But, no; um-um.
RW: I’m curious about a couple things you said –
J: Um-hmm?
RW: One of them is partly due to the drug court something clicked with you, and you really wanted it work?
J: Yeah.
RW: Any ideas what that was?
J: I think at different points – it really wouldn’t apply here. I was going to say at different points a drug addict will get a window where you get that gift of desperation, right? And I think you have to – during that window, you better jump in, or that window may not pop up again for a little bit.
I just knew I was going to get in trouble. I was doing things that I could have got in trouble for. And I don’t know if it was because I was doing them with a clean mind, and I Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 18
was noticing my surroundings, and I was paying attention to everything a little bit more than I normally would – I just knew I was going to get in trouble.
And I said, “You know what? I don’t want to,” I already could have been going to prison for, you know, five years (or whatever it would have been). If I got in trouble again I would have gone to prison for at least seven to ten years, I think. It would have been a first degree felony, plus the second degrees I had there.
So just that – I don’t know; I thought about my life, and I thought about everything and I said, you know, “I don’t want to do this.”
Does that make sense at all? Okay.
[44:10]
RW: It does.
J: Um-hmm.
I was just going to say I’m a stubborn person sometimes, when it comes to that, you know? Everybody has – I don’t want to be cliché (and I’m trying not to be) – everybody has different bottoms. Everybody is different, you know?
Some people could go to a meeting, they could go through some hard times when they’re 18, 19 years old – my sponsor right now is 40 years old, and he’s coming up on 20 years clean. He was able to do that; he was able to say he had enough and hear some other people talk, and stay clean. That’s not my story. I had to go through everything, and learn everything the hard way.
JD: If you’re participating in a 12-step program, does everyone have a sponsor? So does that – your sponsor who’s been 20 years clean, does he also have a sponsor? Is that –
J: Um-hmm.
JD: Part of the system?
J: Yeah; but there’s no etched-in-stone system; it’s not like it would be illegal for him not to, but typically you would want a sponsor that has a sponsor, who has a sponsor – you know what I mean?
JD: Um-hmm.
J: Typically; and not everybody in the program has a sponsor. But I think everybody that’s doing the program has a sponsor – if that makes sense?
JD: Um-hmm. Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 19
AD: So the 12 steps has seemed to be pretty positive influence in your life. What else with drug court was positive and effective for you?
J: I’ll tell you what was really good about drug court: it gave me – I think they know what they’re doing as far as the way it’s set up, and the phases, and everything like that because what I needed (coming out) was accountability. I needed some structure, I needed to be held accountable on a regular basis. And I think it really provided that.
And I think right when it got to the point where this was too much, it backs off a little bit. Do you know what I mean?
[46:41]
RW: Um-hmm.
J: I mean, because it’s a lot to remember. I’ve seen a lot of people get in trouble just because they missed an appointment with their counsellor, or they were five minutes late to a UA.
I think another thing – the low creatines – I don’t think they should change it, because the truth of the matter is the chart they use (or the test they use) is the same as – what is it? The DOT – Department of Transportation – it’s the same cutoff as them, and it’s pretty low: it’s like 20, or something like that.
But I think what they should do is take into account the first (say) month, or few weeks – because when somebody’s detoxing, your body’s detoxing and you’re going to the bathroom a lot, and your creatine’s going to be low. Other than that, I think people are usually just full of it when they say it was a fake low, I think they were flushing (for the most part).
I’ve never been even close to being low – I’ve looked at, you know?
RW: Speaking of flushing –
J: [Laughs]
RW: What other insider language –
J: Um-hmm?
RW: Is associated with drug culture or drug court?
J: [Sighs] What other language is associated with –
RW: Somebody from the outside, they wouldn’t get?
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 20
AD: Slang.
J: Huh? Just drug slang, or – I don’t think there’s any drug court slang, but I think there’s drug addicts have their own slang.
I think if I said, like if I said a “rig,” would you know what that is? Yeah?
RW: A rig?
J: Yeah?
RW: I think a car.
J: Right, right, right; and it would be a syringe to a drug addict. Or you know, a “stem” would be a crack pipe. Typically to a junkie, “hustlin’” would be doing what you got to do to get your money to get high.
I don’t know; a lot of these things (a lot of these words) are [laughs] – they come to me –
RW: They’re in the situation.
J: Yeah, they come to me – like I’m trying to think of a bunch of them right now, and they’re not like popping in my head.
[49:24]
AD: You know what, maybe to get you going, I guess –
J: [Laughs]
AD: Well –
J: Yeah?
AD: I guess when drug court participants are talking – one instance is maybe, “Yeah, he got a low.”
J: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! There you go! He got a – yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
AD: [Inaudible]
J: Yeah.
AD: Or, “He went out,” which means –
J: “He went out”: he went back to using. Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 21
AD: He went back to using?
J: Um-hmm; yeah.
JD: Both of those things mean the same? He got a low –
J: No, he got a low means alright he went to – “Why did Andy go back, why did he get two days in jail?”
“He got a low” – that means he got a low creatine.
JD: Low creatine?
J: If I said, “Oh, Andrew went back out,” that means he relapsed; he’s not going to meetings (well he could be going to meetings), but he relapsed – he’s back out there, using.
RW: Is a low the same as a dirty?
J: Um-um, no; a dirty they find something in your system. What a low is, is typically somebody flushes their system for a few hours before the test, and their creatine levels are low because it’s really mostly water [laughs], right?
JD: It is interesting, because I have heard the judge say something (inadvertently), and then the whole drug court erupts in laughter –
J: Oh.
JD: Because he’s using slang –
J: He’s funny.
JD: Unknowingly.
J: He’s so funny.
JD: Yeah.
J: Judge Willmore – I don’t know, but I don’t believe when I was first on drug court – didn’t like me very much. And by the end of it he really liked me. Like if I go – I haven’t been to any of the drug courts in a while, but every time I go he’ll say, “Big John, come up here.” And he’ll have me talk. Yeah.
He said (flat out) in court, he said one time, “You’re one person I didn’t think was going to make it.” And he really didn’t.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 22
RW: When the judge calls you up (now that you’re a graduate) –
J: Um-hmm?
[51:32]
RW: What does he ask you to do?
J: It depends; sometimes it’ll just be something as simple as how long I’m clean, what I had to do to stay clean. A couple times what he would say is, “What would your suggestion to the people in drug court, (if you had to suggest something to them) what would you suggest?” That’s typically what he would ask me.
RW: What would you suggest?
J: The first thing I suggest [laughs] is what I said before; I said, “Drug court is a lot easier if you’re not trying to do drugs. And it’s a really hard program to try to do if you’re going to try to beat the system and do drugs.”
But probably above all else, would be don’t try to sit there and lie to Judge Willmore on a regular basis. He’s been doing it for – what, 14 years? And you’re telling him –
I heard a guy tell this story one time: he got a dirty, right? And [laughing] I’m telling – I couldn’t make this up. A lot of times when people do heroin, if they’re smoking it, right? They’ll cut a, you know, the outside of a pen (just the pen casing) – they’ll cut it a little bit, and then they’ll smoke it with that; and it gets residue in it, right? Or you could do with a straw.
[Laughing] And he goes, and he says, “Do you want to explain to me why you had a dirty for heroin?”
And he says, “Well, I was drinking a coke and I was using – I didn’t realize it and I was using the same straw that I was using for smoking heroin.”
[Laughter]
[53:35]
[Laughing] And the judge literally looked at him –
[Laughter]
Looked at him like this – the whole place was dying, I’m dying: I’m turning red, I’m laughing. Oh, that’s really just one story. Just don’t tell him any garbage like that. The best thing you can do is tell him, “I screwed up.” That’s the best thing you could do.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 23
I really believe that there are some faults, you know? Every system – no system is perfect. I believe that he (I can’t speak for everybody involved in drug court), but I believe that Judge Willmore really does want to help people. I really do believe that. I believe that he is really personally invested in it.
So when he says, “I can handle a drug addict, but I can’t handle a criminal,” he means it. He’s not going to sit there and let you lie to him only so many times. But if you tell him the truth, and you say, “You know what? I screwed up and I did some dope,” or, “I used,” you’re not going to be in that much trouble, you know (as long as you’re not going in every week and saying that). You know?
AD: So speaking of criminality and addiction, what would you tell someone who knew next to nothing about addiction or drug court, and you know, may have some prior stigmas that they attach to drug addiction and criminality? What would you say to people who have no idea about this world of drug court and addiction?
J: What would I say to them?
AD: What would you want them to know?
[55:40]
J: I kind of hate that. I know what I would want them to know, but I hate it because I’m not one of those drug addicts that make excuses for what I do (or what I did), right?
It is a disease, and yeah – they should know that. At least that’s what they say, it’s a disease, right? I think a drug addict in the midst of active addiction is not the person that he or she is. I’ve met (obviously) countless drug addicts in my life, and some of them are the best people I’ve ever met in my life, you know. Some of them aren’t.
But there is usually a lot of talent amongst drug addicts. Going back, a lot of musicians, artists, things like that; they seem to think with that side of their minds more, you know? I don’t know.
And then what would I say to them about drug court? I would say that it’s something, as a community, they should get behind; because typically when you take a drug addict and you throw them in prison – one thing I’ll say about Utah, is you can get in trouble really easily here, right? Because there’s a lot of cops – and you always hear people say that, but on the other hand it’s one of the safest cities in the country, right?
You could get in a lot of trouble here; but if you get in trouble here, they’re not that likely to just say, “Screw you,” and toss you right to prison. They really do try to take an addict and help him.
[57:53]
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 24
So I would probably urge the community, if drug addicts were something that they were worried about, or anything like that – I would urge them to get behind a program like that, you know?
Just like anything else, the success rate probably isn’t high. I used after drug court – I had surgery, and that kind of set me over the edge a little bit. So the success rate is low, but it’s higher than it would be without it, let’s say. You know?
Yeah; same with AA, NA. You know, the percentage of people that go to their first meeting and stay clean for the rest of their lives – that’s almost non-existent, but it happens, you know.
AD: Is there anything else that you’d like to tell us, that we didn’t bring up?
J: I don’t know. I think drug court – I think the most important thing about it is you have to go – you either have to do meetings (because if you don’t go to meetings and get your stuff signed, you’ve got to go to jail, right?).
So I think the most important thing it does is one: it gives a drug addict that’s been just living on the streets, or whatever they’re doing, from house to house, or hotel – it forces them to have structure, it forces them to learn how to live life again. And it puts a lot of people that would have never heard about any other program (outside program) – it puts them in touch with other programs, right?
[60:16]
I think that’s important.
JD: Other social service programs?
J: Yeah; well like I don’t want to just say AA or NA, because there’s other things that people do to stay clean, you know. They could maybe stay involved with the drug court groups; they have Addicts and Athletes now; you know what I mean? Where they have meetings where there are sports involved, but they’re all addicts getting together to do it. It’s introducing them to a new world, almost – you know that I mean?
I don’t know; it did me a lot of good. I really can’t say anything bad about it. I do think some of the sanctions are petty (I really do), but at the same time it’s kind of tricky (like I said before), it’s tricky to decipher who is doing the right thing, who is doing the wrong thing, without certain rules being in place.
And [laughing] the truth of the matter is, you’re signing a piece of paper that’s giving your rights up; you really are. So I mean, you can say whatever you want, but you signed your rights away so you could stay out of prison (initially) – that’s what people do, right?
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 25
If you have an opportunity to better yourself [laughing] in the real world or in prison – I don’t know how many people – there’s some people that say, “No, just send me to prison.” But I don’t know – I don’t understand that; I don’t.
I don’t know; I could say that I’ve been clean over a year. I had to use again; when I started using again I used for a year and a half – so it could happen to anyone. I don’t know.
I don’t know if I have anything else to say.
[62:25]
AD: You know what – there is one question –
J: Yeah?
AD: One more question –
J: Yeah?
AD: I forgot to ask you, because you’re really well-spoken, and so I wanted to ask your thoughts on jail (or prison) –
J: Um-hmm?
AD: I don’t know if you’ve been to prison, or just jail – but what to tell people who have no idea about that world, what’s jail like? How it feels, what did you experience there?
J: Well I’ll tell you this: people here [laughing] should feel lucky that they’re from here and they’re not going to jail like in New Jersey or California, or things like that, because it’s a lot different. It’s a lot different. In fact, I’m pretty sure that jails there are worse than prison here, you know?
I don’t know; it’s not for everybody. There’s some people that can go to jail and that could absolutely ruin their lives in a sense where, you know, they start getting comfortable doing that, right? But if they don’t develop a hard streak, they could be – it really can become just a scared victim, right? For a long time in your life.
I’m lucky I’m not that kind of person. But I don’t know – if there’s any way to avoid jail. And the other thing about it, honestly, is it is friggin boring. I mean, bottom line it’s boring, the food’s horrible, it’s a waste of time – it’s a waste of time.
What could be more of a waste of your time in life than jail (or prison)? Nothing, right? Nothing. I mean, you’re sitting there and you have to devise a little, you know, routine to make what time go by – to make time go by as fast as possible. In the real world sometimes you don’t have enough time in the day, right? I don’t know. Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 26
I don’t know, unless you want to be a gangster and you think it’s cool, then go ahead. Right? [Laughs] I don’t know.
RW: I agree with Andrew: you’re very well-spoken. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experiences with us.
J: You’re welcome; welcome.
RW: Do you still feel comfortable signing the release?
J: Yes, it’s fine [laughs]; yeah.
RW: Thank you; I’m going to turn this off.
[End recording – 64:59]

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Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 1
CACHE VALLEY DRUG COURT
ORAL HISTORY
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee: John
Place of Interview: Logan Library, Logan, Utah
Date of Interview: December 14, 2016
Interviewer: Jennifer Duncan, Andrew Dupree, Randy Williams
Recordist: Randy Williams
Recording Equipment: Marantz Professional: PMD66, Shure omnidirectional mic
Transcription Equipment used: Express Scribe with PowerPlayer foot pedal.
Transcribed by: Susan Gross, 05 January 2017
Transcript Proofed by: Randy Williams, 16 January 2017
Brief Description of Contents: John, a graduate of drug court, speaks about his experiences with addiction, and how addiction has affected his life, and the lives of his family. He discusses the benefits of drug court, as well as some of the challenges.
Reference: JD: Jennifer Duncan
RW: Randy Williams
AD: Andrew Dupree
J: John
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as “uh” and false starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcript. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets.
TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
[00:01]
JD: Okay; so this is Jennifer Duncan; I am with Andrew and Randy, interviewing John here in the Logan Public Library, for the Cache Valley Utah Drug Court Oral History Project. And it is December 14th, 2016.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 2
J: Hi [laughs].
AD: Hi John.
So to start, could you tell us about your background: where you’re from, maybe a little bit about your childhood.
J: Like you just said before, I was born in New Jersey. I’m 44, so I was born in ’72. I grew up with both of my parents until I was (I think) about eight, something like that. I wasn’t from any kind of – I didn’t have like a real horrible home life. I don’t have like a big, you know, sad story or anything like that; it was decent.
They got separated. I lived with my mother until I was about 12 and I started getting a little out of control and my father said, “You know what? You’re coming to live with me.”
I think it says that here – yeah, I started doing drugs about then: started drinking and smoking pot, and stuff like that. And almost immediately. I don’t know if it was due to doing those things, or it was my attitude in general about everything, but almost immediately, you know, my grades went down, everything like that.
[02:00]
My dad wasn’t having that; he took me and I moved down to about a half hour south of Clifton, New Jersey, to a town called Metuchen. And you know, I went to high school and everything there; I went to the end of my junior high and high school there.
I always – it says what my ethnicity is – I’m three-quarters Italian, a little Irish and a little German. And all my family that I knew growing up was Italian, so.
You know, basically all through high school what I did was I played some sports, but for the most part I’ve been a musician my whole life. I was already playing in bands; I was playing clubs when I was a junior in high school. We were already playing in like New York City, and stuff like that.
JD: What instrument did you play?
RW: What do you play?
JD: [Laughs]
J: I play – I guess my best instrument would be bass guitar; but I play bass, I play guitar, I play drums, I play piano, do some singing (my range isn’t what it was when I was younger). Yeah, so I’ve always done that. That’s probably (unfortunately) the most consistent things I’ve ever done.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 3
I was saying this to Andrew today probably – if you ask me anything, I know most about music and probably drugs (unfortunately). But that’s been a part of my life my entire life.
Yeah, and throughout high school that’s what I did: my drug addiction progressed. I think it’s pretty typical, you know, of any drug addict; I don’t think my story’s that unique.
I think some people – like some, I don’t want to say “normal” people, but let’s say you know, you guys aren’t drug addicts. If you did something and you started, you know, feeling high or feeling really drunk, you would start feeling like you were, you know, losing control of yourself, right? That’s what I would imagine, anyway. Like, “Something’s wrong.”
And I think a drug addict immediately feels like a comfort, and feels like they’re starting to gain control; so I think like drugs work for a drug addict. And at some point after, you know, it progresses I lose control and all of a sudden it doesn’t work anymore, and it becomes a necessity.
[04:50]
That’s pretty much my background, as far as where I’m from and what I did, and when I started doing drugs, and all that.
AD: And what sort of drugs –
J: Have I done in my life?
AD: Have you done, or what became the problem drug (or drugs)?
J: My drug of choice, inevitably, became heroin.
AD: Okay.
J: I started doing that when I was about 18, or so (18 or 19).
JD: How did you come to Cache Valley?
J: Oh. I was in New Jersey, and my first wife (she was my girlfriend at the time), her father had a house and lived out in Las Vegas. And so she went out there, and then I went out there a little while after. One thing lead to another, we stayed together for a while, we broke up. And I met my [laughing] next ex-wife I met in Las Vegas, and she’s originally from here.
JD: Okay.
J: So yeah, we came to visit one time. It was around Easter, and there was some kind of family reunion; and we decided to move up here. Yeah. Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 4
AD: So going back to your background and upbringing a little bit – so you’re Italian; you said the family that you knew was Italian?
J: Um-hmm.
AD: Italians are generally known for having pretty close-knit families, is that correct? Or can you kind of tell us how that – the Italian family dynamic – how that affected, or played into your drug use?
J: I don’t know that it –
AD: If [??] I guess?
J: Yeah, I don’t know that it played into my drug use. And I’ll tell you this about a close-knit family: I think things (inevitably) with religion, with culture, I think they change. I think through generations – like you’ll notice, like you’re LDS here. The generation now that’s growing up Mormon (or LDS, whatever you’d like to call the religion), they’re not as, I don’t know, strict about life, and things as the generation before. And it’s probably so for the generation before that – just like same with the Italians and the Roman Catholics – it’s the same thing.
[07:38]
I noticed that the older people in my family did have that real, tight-knit Italian thing; but after my grandparents died, I feel like that kind of fell off, and it wasn’t as much like that.
I did drink for the first time, though, at one of their parties, because they did always have an open bar– so I guess I didn’t use drugs because of the culture, but at the same time I was sneaking some (I think) Jack and Cokes or something like that [laughing] when I was eight years old. They were pissed; they were pissed off.
I was running around; I think my parents just got separated, and I’m drinking. And I remember it too, and I’m slurring, talking to people. They wanted to throw me in the back room. Yeah, they were pretty mad.
AD: So you went from New Jersey, to Las Vegas, to Cache Valley – is that correct?
J: Yeah, I lived in New York City, too, a couple times in between all that. But –
AD: Okay.
J: Yeah.
AD: So was your drug use continuous throughout, in every city?
J: Yeah, yeah. Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 5
AD: So you were staying –
J: I always had periods where I tried to – I’ll say I’ve been fighting addiction, since it became a problem I’ve been fighting it, do you know what I mean?
So when I moved out to Las Vegas – I went out there and I think I was just drinking a little bit. And I (inevitably) you know, got acclimated to my surroundings. I think I was going to some NA meetings when I first got there, but obviously I started using again. And that’s also where I kind of got into the meth world a bit too, even though that never became my drug of choice, I still had some years with that too.
[09:50]
AD: Now with heroin being your drug of choice, did you also have problems or use with pharmaceutical pills, and opiates?
J: Absolutely; absolutely, quite a bit. Quite a bit.
I would say my drug of choice – it is heroin, but probably for like for a long time, pretty consistently I did speedballs, which is cocaine and heroin (probably for a good 12 years straight).
AD: And what was that experience like – doing speedballs?
J: It’s – you guys want me to tell you like that actual, like you know, what it would feel like to me, doing it?
AD: Because for those who don’t know, a speedball is cocaine, and heroin –
J: Um-hmm.
AD: At the same time.
J: Um-hmm.
AD: It’s killed many celebrities.
J: Um-hmm.
AD: It’s known for being incredibly euphoric, but also extremely dangerous –
J: Right.
AD: Because one is an upper and the other is a downer.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 6
J: I actually believe, because of the – I think cocaine is probably just as dangerous to shoot as heroin: it could blow your heart out. It’s just an intense rush, like you feel that cocaine – there’s no drug in the world (and I’m not getting off topic, I’m just going to say this): there’s no drug in the world that’s more addictive while you’re doing it. (Not physically addictive, like heroin where you need it the next day, if you don’t have it you’re going to be sick and you can’t do anything.)
Cocaine, while you’re doing it, is incredibly addictive. All you want to do is more cocaine, more cocaine, more cocaine. You could have $100 – it will be gone; if you have $300, it will be gone; if you have $800, it will be gone. You’ll just keep – you know, you can’t stop.
[12:03]
But when you do it with heroin, you get that euphoric feeling of the cocaine, and you almost hear like – people describe it as trains [makes rumbling sound], like that. But you don’t have that wicked craving, because the heroin – after that cocaine comes down, the heroin takes over, and you’re comfortable.
So it is dangerous.
AD: So have you ever had, I guess, any close calls with, you know?
J: Overdosing?
AD: Yes.
J: I’m really lucky; I’m really lucky like that. Truthfully, there’s not many people that – I don’t know that many people that did heroin on and off as long as me and they’re still alive; to be honest with you, I really don’t. Most of them are dead.
Have I any close calls? I have one time in – actually in Las Vegas. And this isn’t like me at all, I started getting a slight [coughs] – excuse me. I started getting a slight habit again, and I was drinking and I got overwhelmingly depressed; like it was the weirdest thing. I got like this depression, I was like, “I don’t want to live anymore.”
And I wound up saying, “The hell with it.” And I said, “I’m out of here.” I looked up at the sky, and I ate all my – I had a Rottweiler, and he was epileptic. And I ate all his Phenobarbitals. And I’ve never been suicidal in my life, never been suicidal after that.
But it was just a thing, and it’s actually really common with somebody like with a slight habit and trying to come off heroin, you can get an overwhelming depression, like your body starts – it doesn’t produce those endorphins anymore, and your testosterone levels are really low.
[14:23] Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 7
And yeah, it was a weird thing. But I made sure I left like two Phenobarbitals for the dog in the morning, [laughing] so he didn’t have a seizure.
But I woke up. I guess I was kind of out of it and my ex found me. I don’t know what they did, but I was on the stretcher when I came to, and all I saw was like everybody, you know, in the neighborhood looking. It was kind of embarrassing, you know?
But other than that – because that was on purpose, right? I was back east and me and my friend (my friend, Jimmy) – we used to be in a band together too, and we did a lot of drugs together. We had some money, and we got a bunch of drugs. And I think I was telling you this – we were doing speedballs all day.
And we were at his house in Staten Island, New York. And it’s one o’clock in the morning. And to this day I think about it, and I think he was insane: he’s like, “Alright, I’ve got to go to work.” And I’m thinking to myself, “How the hell are you going to work? It’s one in the morning, we’ve been doing like,” really, I mean we were high.
And he goes to work and I do another speedball, and it’s like at one-thirty in the morning. And the next thing I knew, I was on the floor and it was four o’clock (four a.m.). And the only thing I could think is I went out, and I think the fact that I did do a speedball (on that particular circumstance) probably saved me, because the coke probably kept me from completely, like my respiratory shutting down, or whatever.
But other than that, I’m not what you would call an “O.D.-er.” I think some people are more susceptible to overdose from opiates than others, you know? I’ve saved – I don’t want to say “saved,” because I was doing drugs with them, but over a dozen people I’ve had to bring back from going out on heroin; breathe for them.
[16:43]
AD: What do you mean by that?
J: I mean, they do a shot of heroin and fall back, and start turning white, lips start turning blue. And you either got to do something, or –. I’m not the type of person to leave somebody there and go about my business. So you breathe for them; some people do other things: throw them in the bathtub (I’ve heard), you know?
AD: Cold shower?
J: Yeah; ice down the pants, whatever.
But your respiratory system is shutting down, that’s what happens. So the logical thing, I mean if you just make it common sense, you breathe for them. And I’ve never lost anybody doing that; but it’s happened more times than I’d like to, you know, that I’d like to admit. A couple close people – it makes you panic, you know? [Inaudible] Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 8
AD: So you’ve spoke quite a bit about music being an important influence in your life. Has the music culture that you were in – how has that affected, or played into your drug use?
J: [Laughs]
AD: Is the music culture synonymous with drugs?
J: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It doesn’t have to be, but it absolutely is. Just the lifestyle that surrounds it, and even with your hallucinogens. Anybody that’s done hallucinogens will tell you that it can be almost a spiritual experience listening to music. You’ve heard the expression you see sounds and hear colors, and it really is. I did a lot of that when I was young too; a lot of acid, and things like that.
[19:01]
But I think – the only thing I think, and I joke about this a lot (like I’ve spoken in NA meetings and stuff like that), and I joke around. And you always hear the expression, “You never heard anybody say, ‘When I grow up I want to be a junkie,’” right?
But I almost – looking back, I almost did. I almost did want to be that, because I wanted to be a rock star, and I wanted to be that – like everything that comes along with being a rock star, right? So I almost did; I mean I wanted to be a rock star, but I kind of almost wanted to be a junkie. So I got half of it right [laughs].
But yeah.
AD: And so when was your first involvement with law enforcement as a result of your drug use?
J: When I think about it, I have never gotten in trouble in my life where it didn’t relate (a little bit) to drugs or alcohol. So my first arrest was right at 18, and it was possession of alcohol under the legal age. I think they call it, whatever – minor –
AD: Minor in possession.
J: Here. Yeah, so that was my first. Yeah, so 18; and then consistently through my life.
AD: And were these arrests or run-ins with the cops, were these for possession charges? Or were these maybe a result of your addiction, you know? Did it involve theft, or you know, trying to feed your habit?
J: So far, all of the above [laughs] that you’ve mentioned. I’ve had anything from violent charges, to thefts, to possessions, distributions; yeah.
AD: So I guess how many children do you have? Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 9
J: I have three biological, and one that I call my son (even though he’s my stepson). I raised him and he doesn’t know his biological father. So four.
AD: So how has your drug use and troubles with the law – how has that affected your children?
[21:53]
J: Well it’s affected them.
I’ll tell you what, my oldest son (it was from my first marriage) – I was always in his life, in and out, in and out. Because me and his mother separated and divorced when he was just a baby. And I was in and out of his life.
When (I think) he was roughly 12 (it was 2009) – that’s about the age he was, anyway – I went back to a rehab. I went to this rehab in Florida. And he decided (it wasn’t his mom saying) – I don’t know if he was embarrassed, which is understandable, you know what I’m saying? What do you tell people like, “Oh yeah, my father is in jail,” or, “My father is in rehab because he’s doing drugs again.” I can see that being embarrassing, and I could see it, you know – he’s in your life.
And we do – we were really, really close; we had just a natural kind of bond, you know. Everybody says, you know, “You love all your children the same.” And to a degree you do, but you always – I don’t know, you have different connections with different people. Like you know, my daughter right now, I’m super, super close with my daughter.
And we had that kind of connection. And so he didn’t talk to me anymore. And actually, February of this year is the first time I talked to him since then (in 2009). So in his case, that affected him a lot.
Daniel, the one I raised – he’s 21. And he’s getting in a little trouble; he’s not an addict like I was. It’s a shame though, he’s super, super, super smart and you know, he doesn’t. I don’t know – my addiction affected him because he’s been through a lot of different things because of, you know, the way I lived, and whatever it was (being locked up, or moving a lot). It’s just not real stable, you know?
[24:25]
I think he – it’s such a weird thing, because I regret (obviously) a lot of things, I do. Everyone says, “Well you shouldn’t regret anything.” I do regret a lot of things, but at the same time, I don’t know. I also, if I didn’t go through the things I went through I wouldn’t be the same person I am. I don’t know.
I have a good relationship with him. He loves me, respects me; but he’s been through a lot because of it.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 10
And I think as it goes down – like my son, Anthony, is 14; my daughter just turned 10 (her name is Savanna). I think each one of them – I think my periods of clean time in their life have been longer.
I have had some patches, you know, where I’ve been gone. And obviously they had to deal with me and their mom separating, getting back together, separating, getting back together periods, and jail, periods of me being in my addiction.
But I think they’ve been affected, but they’ve been affected a little bit less; a little bit less (but nonetheless, still affected), you know?
JD: That first son that you said you just re-established contact with in February.
J: Um-hmm?
JD: Had you already started drug court when you re-established that relationship?
J: I was done with drug court; I was done with drug court already.
JD: Okay.
J: Yeah. I actually was done – I finished drug court in January 2014.
JD: And when did you start drug court?
J: I think it was June 2012; I think June, somewhere along those lines.
JD: So it’s about 18 –
J: I did about 18 months – 17 or 18 months.
JD: That’s pretty speedy.
J: Yeah, I didn’t have any sanctions.
JD: Uh-huh.
J: Anything like that.
JD: Um-hmm.
[26:35]
J: Yeah. I think drug court is a lot easier if you’re not trying to do drugs while you’re on it.
[Laughter] Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 11
J: A lot.
JD: Uh-huh?
J: Yeah.
RW: Tell us about your involvement in drug court.
J: I’ll tell you this, when I first got drug court, I really thought I was just going to prison, to be honest with you. I had a possession charge, distribution as well: distribution of heroin.
JD: Um-hmm.
J: The task force and the – what is it, that would be the county attorney?
AD: Prosecutor? District Attorney?
J: Well it was the prosecutor, but the main – the boss – would be the county attorney, I guess?
JD: I think.
J: Yeah, whatever.
AD: Deputy – what is it?
JD: District Attorney?
J: Yeah, something like that.
AD: Right, right.
J: Whatever, yeah [laughs]. They did not want me to have drug court; they did not want me to have drug court. Typically, what people observe when they are having people in jail, they would observe like three times. I think I observed ten times. They kept telling me, “Come back. Come back.”
The last time I went to observe, Judge Willmore said, “I’m sorry, John,” you know – I mean they had me write letters, all kinds of stuff. And he said, “Sorry, they said no.” And my lawyer wasn’t there, but then right as they said that, Shannon Demler–
Oh, was I not?
RW: It’s fine.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 12
J: Oh, yeah. He came in and he heard them say that. And he started (literally, I’ve never seen him like that) – he started –
JD: That was your attorney?
J: Yeah.
JD: Uh-huh.
J: Yeah, he started screaming at him. He said, “What do you mean no?” And the prosecutor said, “Well I asked him,” and he said, “That’s why you can’t take no for an answer.”
[28:38]
Anyway, he went and talked to them, and he said, “Come back next week.” He went and talked to them, and I went to court that following Tuesday morning. They said, “Yeah, you got drug court.”
JD: So you sound like you were really motivated to want that program?
J: Well –
JD: How did you know about it, because we’ve heard that some people aren’t even aware of drug court.
J: Oh, I knew about drug court since I lived in Las Vegas.
JD: Oh.
J: That’s when I first (that I knew about it) when it first started.
But I don’t know if I was – how can you not be, I mean, motivated? I mean, you’re in jail, you don’t know how long you’re going to be sitting in jail. I was at a point, though, when I was in jail that I was okay if I got drug court. I was okay if I went to [??], I was okay if I went to prison. I knew I had to just stop doing what I was doing. So I was kind of just okay to do whatever at that point.
But everyone was trying to – everyone was getting drug court. And I thought I would do way better in drug court, and I think it would be better for me than going to prison at that point, because I was pretty sure I wanted to do the right thing, you know?
So you asked me what my involvement was. I’ll tell you what, when they finally gave me drug court I got out. And I didn’t use, but I still wanted to kind of live the way I was living. So the first few months I was doing some things that probably weren’t right, and I wasn’t going to that many meetings. But I was still getting by, and I was paying them off. [Paying for the programs.] Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 13
And something clicked (I don’t know what) and I said, “You know what? I better stop doing all this crap, and I better,” I knew myself bought into the 12-step programs; some people do, some people don’t. I think it works for some people, and for some people it doesn’t. I knew I had to get back into Narcotics Anonymous and do that. So I really did.
[31:07]
I really did it full bore. I took drug court really seriously – as far as all the appointments went, I didn’t miss any of them. I got really active in the NA home groups. I was active in the groups that they had in drug court. I think pretty quickly (with like maybe ten months clean at that point) I was the GSR (which is the group service representative for the home group).
RW: Can you tell us about –
JD: What does that mean?
RW: Yeah [laughs].
J: A GSR basically (AA or NA, but I’m going to just say NA, because that’s what I was in) has – you have a home group. All the NA meetings that are in town, each of those meetings – like a person that’s going to NA, if they want to really be active, they pick a home group, okay? So back then my home group was at Hungry for Recovery, where they did the breakfast on Saturdays. And I got really involved in that.
But now that’s the home group level. After the home group level (where all the meetings are), you have area. This area is northern Utah area in Narcotics Anonymous. So the GSR for the home group (is a group service representative) once a month reports to area, and there’s a meeting for area.
If people are voted in for different positions, or if there’s by-laws that are getting changed, or if you know, the home group has anything they want to bring up to area, that service representative goes back and forth.
JD: So that’s all a volunteer organization?
[33:09]
J: Yes.
JD: Right?
J: Yeah.
JD: Yeah; and so that’s just kind of the structural apparatus – Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 14
J: Um-hmm.
JD: That makes the whole thing?
J: Yeah; and see after area, there’s region – after region, I think there’s a U.S. now, but and then there’s world. And there’s conventions for each of those.
JD: Are you still involved in that –
J: Um-hmm.
JD: Structure?
J: Yeah, I’m still involved in Narcotics Anonymous. I’m not as involved as I was when I got clean that time, only because I really believe [laughs] – I don’t know if this is people in general, but I think drug addicts lack balance. (I know I do, anyway – I shouldn’t speak for everybody). But I really do. I obsess over one thing, and whether it’s NA, whether it’s music, whether it’s lifting weights, whether it’s a girl – anything like that – I obsess over it.
And this time around I’m really trying to have some balance. And I do do NA, and most of my friends are people in NA. But I also – I work, I spend a lot of time with my kids. I have another music project I’m in. I’m trying to have some balance; yeah.
AD: So you’ve had quite a bit of involvement with NA (from what we’ve discussed in the past) –
J: Um-hmm.
AD: You’ve had some involvement with what they call the Recovery Café, with yourself and your ex-wife?
J: Yeah.
AD: Could you tell us about that?
J: Well basically there’s that building over on Tenth, behind – you know where I’m talking about? Behind Walgreen’s, yeah? That’s where the Hungry for Recovery met, and there’s the girl (I don’t need to mention any names) that is in that home group that knew the guy that owns that building. And he (coincidentally) was involved with AA (or Al-Anon, one or the other), and she convinced him (at a good price) to let us have this out of the morning meeting there. So that’s how we got into that building.
[35:40]
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 15
And then me and my ex wound up getting back together at that point, and we came up with the idea of seeing if we couldn’t start a clubhouse, you know, a clean (or sober, however you want to say it) clubhouse. And I don’t know, we did; we opened it up.
It wound up being too expensive for us to keep, and then I wound up having surgery, she wound up having surgery. So what we did is we just inevitably turned it over to a board. So now it’s ran by a board of people.
JD: And that’s what they call the Recovery Café?
J: Um-hmm. Yeah, we called it the clubhouse, I think, then; but now it’s the Recovery Café, yeah.
JD: So is that a non-profit organization, if it’s run by [??].
J: Yeah, I’m sure they have it set up as a non-profit now; yeah. Even if you owned it you could set it up as a non-profit.
JD: Um-hmm.
J: But, um-hmm.
RW: How does that work, when there’s some sanctions against (in drug court) interacting with folks that –
J: Okay.
RW: How does the Recovery Café work?
JD: [Inaudible] [laughs]
J: Okay. First of all, if you’re in drug court and you go to a meeting, right, you can’t get in trouble for associating if you’re at a meeting and there’s other people from drug court there. It can get a little tricky, because can you get into trouble for getting a ride home?
JD: Sure.
J: Or something like that? Of course; of course. But I guess if they wanted to, as far as just hanging out at the café – I guess if they wanted to, and the cops came in there, they could say, “You know what? You guys are hanging out.” But they don’t do that.
I think it’s counter-productive; I think if they did that, it would be very, very counter-productive. All I did was associate (the entire time I was on drug court) – and I believe I’ve told Willmore in [laughs] the lunch with the judge thing.
[38:00] Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 16
I think that if there’s one of the things that they should change; but it’s really tricky for them to change it, but associating with the other people on drug court saved my life, really.
Those are the people that they were going through –I think if you’re hanging out with people that have the same goals as you and not the people that are trying to just beat the system the entire time (because you’re going to get that). You’re going to get it – inevitably that happens, you know; probably more than 50% of the time. They’re going to be, you know, drinking on a Thursday and they know they’re not getting tested until Monday, that kind of thing. But associating with people that are doing the same thing you’re doing, and trying to stay clean, and trying to build a good life I think it’s important, you know? I really do.
I’d like to believe – I could have just been lucky, but I like to believe that they didn’t mess – they weren’t going out of their way to catch people associating in that kind of manner. Like I used to hang out with a girl on drug court, and I seriously – we hung out almost every, single day: drove around, did whatever. We even started the Thursday night meeting. (There was no Thursday night meeting, we started that).
And I’ve never gotten any (partial luck), but I never got in any trouble. But people hanging out, smoking spice in garages, you know, they inevitably do get in trouble. I don’t know.
AD: So if you could make suggestions to the current drug court, or perhaps students at the university who might be thinking about going into social work, or –
J: Um-hmm?
AD: Law enforcement –
J: Um-hmm?
[40:08]
AD: So is that something you would suggest, that maybe the associations should be relaxed? But as you said, it’s –
J: It’s tricky, right?
AD: Tricky.
J: Right? Because you’re telling people, “Yeah, you can associate,” but you know, two drug addicts that aren’t trying to stay clean, associating, is not going to turn into something good, right?
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 17
And that also happens with, you know, relationships. Like people meet in drug court and they start hanging out; I’ve seen it work out, but for the most part it doesn’t. For the most part whatever your disease is attack each other, [laughing] however you want to describe it. And they get in trouble.
That’s what a lot of the associations are with girls and guys, right?
Yeah; I would think maybe do it as you go up in phases, maybe work that buddy system thing out a little bit more, because they had it in effect – do you know what I’m talking about?
JD: No.
J: I even got some paperwork (when I was in drug court) given to me by the POs; now you could pick somebody and say, okay (for example) Andrew was in drug court and I was in there longer than him, right? So I’m on Phase 4, he’s on Phase 1 or 2. We have a piece of paper saying, you know, he could go with me to meetings, or we could do some step work together, and we could hang out without getting in any trouble. They had that implemented, but at the same time they really didn’t do it, because I got that paperwork and they never followed through about any of it.
JD: Yeah – have you ever seen that implemented with anyone else? Because I have never heard of that.
[42:09]
J: A couple of people at the same time as me got that paperwork. But, no; um-um.
RW: I’m curious about a couple things you said –
J: Um-hmm?
RW: One of them is partly due to the drug court something clicked with you, and you really wanted it work?
J: Yeah.
RW: Any ideas what that was?
J: I think at different points – it really wouldn’t apply here. I was going to say at different points a drug addict will get a window where you get that gift of desperation, right? And I think you have to – during that window, you better jump in, or that window may not pop up again for a little bit.
I just knew I was going to get in trouble. I was doing things that I could have got in trouble for. And I don’t know if it was because I was doing them with a clean mind, and I Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 18
was noticing my surroundings, and I was paying attention to everything a little bit more than I normally would – I just knew I was going to get in trouble.
And I said, “You know what? I don’t want to,” I already could have been going to prison for, you know, five years (or whatever it would have been). If I got in trouble again I would have gone to prison for at least seven to ten years, I think. It would have been a first degree felony, plus the second degrees I had there.
So just that – I don’t know; I thought about my life, and I thought about everything and I said, you know, “I don’t want to do this.”
Does that make sense at all? Okay.
[44:10]
RW: It does.
J: Um-hmm.
I was just going to say I’m a stubborn person sometimes, when it comes to that, you know? Everybody has – I don’t want to be cliché (and I’m trying not to be) – everybody has different bottoms. Everybody is different, you know?
Some people could go to a meeting, they could go through some hard times when they’re 18, 19 years old – my sponsor right now is 40 years old, and he’s coming up on 20 years clean. He was able to do that; he was able to say he had enough and hear some other people talk, and stay clean. That’s not my story. I had to go through everything, and learn everything the hard way.
JD: If you’re participating in a 12-step program, does everyone have a sponsor? So does that – your sponsor who’s been 20 years clean, does he also have a sponsor? Is that –
J: Um-hmm.
JD: Part of the system?
J: Yeah; but there’s no etched-in-stone system; it’s not like it would be illegal for him not to, but typically you would want a sponsor that has a sponsor, who has a sponsor – you know what I mean?
JD: Um-hmm.
J: Typically; and not everybody in the program has a sponsor. But I think everybody that’s doing the program has a sponsor – if that makes sense?
JD: Um-hmm. Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 19
AD: So the 12 steps has seemed to be pretty positive influence in your life. What else with drug court was positive and effective for you?
J: I’ll tell you what was really good about drug court: it gave me – I think they know what they’re doing as far as the way it’s set up, and the phases, and everything like that because what I needed (coming out) was accountability. I needed some structure, I needed to be held accountable on a regular basis. And I think it really provided that.
And I think right when it got to the point where this was too much, it backs off a little bit. Do you know what I mean?
[46:41]
RW: Um-hmm.
J: I mean, because it’s a lot to remember. I’ve seen a lot of people get in trouble just because they missed an appointment with their counsellor, or they were five minutes late to a UA.
I think another thing – the low creatines – I don’t think they should change it, because the truth of the matter is the chart they use (or the test they use) is the same as – what is it? The DOT – Department of Transportation – it’s the same cutoff as them, and it’s pretty low: it’s like 20, or something like that.
But I think what they should do is take into account the first (say) month, or few weeks – because when somebody’s detoxing, your body’s detoxing and you’re going to the bathroom a lot, and your creatine’s going to be low. Other than that, I think people are usually just full of it when they say it was a fake low, I think they were flushing (for the most part).
I’ve never been even close to being low – I’ve looked at, you know?
RW: Speaking of flushing –
J: [Laughs]
RW: What other insider language –
J: Um-hmm?
RW: Is associated with drug culture or drug court?
J: [Sighs] What other language is associated with –
RW: Somebody from the outside, they wouldn’t get?
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 20
AD: Slang.
J: Huh? Just drug slang, or – I don’t think there’s any drug court slang, but I think there’s drug addicts have their own slang.
I think if I said, like if I said a “rig,” would you know what that is? Yeah?
RW: A rig?
J: Yeah?
RW: I think a car.
J: Right, right, right; and it would be a syringe to a drug addict. Or you know, a “stem” would be a crack pipe. Typically to a junkie, “hustlin’” would be doing what you got to do to get your money to get high.
I don’t know; a lot of these things (a lot of these words) are [laughs] – they come to me –
RW: They’re in the situation.
J: Yeah, they come to me – like I’m trying to think of a bunch of them right now, and they’re not like popping in my head.
[49:24]
AD: You know what, maybe to get you going, I guess –
J: [Laughs]
AD: Well –
J: Yeah?
AD: I guess when drug court participants are talking – one instance is maybe, “Yeah, he got a low.”
J: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! There you go! He got a – yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
AD: [Inaudible]
J: Yeah.
AD: Or, “He went out,” which means –
J: “He went out”: he went back to using. Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 21
AD: He went back to using?
J: Um-hmm; yeah.
JD: Both of those things mean the same? He got a low –
J: No, he got a low means alright he went to – “Why did Andy go back, why did he get two days in jail?”
“He got a low” – that means he got a low creatine.
JD: Low creatine?
J: If I said, “Oh, Andrew went back out,” that means he relapsed; he’s not going to meetings (well he could be going to meetings), but he relapsed – he’s back out there, using.
RW: Is a low the same as a dirty?
J: Um-um, no; a dirty they find something in your system. What a low is, is typically somebody flushes their system for a few hours before the test, and their creatine levels are low because it’s really mostly water [laughs], right?
JD: It is interesting, because I have heard the judge say something (inadvertently), and then the whole drug court erupts in laughter –
J: Oh.
JD: Because he’s using slang –
J: He’s funny.
JD: Unknowingly.
J: He’s so funny.
JD: Yeah.
J: Judge Willmore – I don’t know, but I don’t believe when I was first on drug court – didn’t like me very much. And by the end of it he really liked me. Like if I go – I haven’t been to any of the drug courts in a while, but every time I go he’ll say, “Big John, come up here.” And he’ll have me talk. Yeah.
He said (flat out) in court, he said one time, “You’re one person I didn’t think was going to make it.” And he really didn’t.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 22
RW: When the judge calls you up (now that you’re a graduate) –
J: Um-hmm?
[51:32]
RW: What does he ask you to do?
J: It depends; sometimes it’ll just be something as simple as how long I’m clean, what I had to do to stay clean. A couple times what he would say is, “What would your suggestion to the people in drug court, (if you had to suggest something to them) what would you suggest?” That’s typically what he would ask me.
RW: What would you suggest?
J: The first thing I suggest [laughs] is what I said before; I said, “Drug court is a lot easier if you’re not trying to do drugs. And it’s a really hard program to try to do if you’re going to try to beat the system and do drugs.”
But probably above all else, would be don’t try to sit there and lie to Judge Willmore on a regular basis. He’s been doing it for – what, 14 years? And you’re telling him –
I heard a guy tell this story one time: he got a dirty, right? And [laughing] I’m telling – I couldn’t make this up. A lot of times when people do heroin, if they’re smoking it, right? They’ll cut a, you know, the outside of a pen (just the pen casing) – they’ll cut it a little bit, and then they’ll smoke it with that; and it gets residue in it, right? Or you could do with a straw.
[Laughing] And he goes, and he says, “Do you want to explain to me why you had a dirty for heroin?”
And he says, “Well, I was drinking a coke and I was using – I didn’t realize it and I was using the same straw that I was using for smoking heroin.”
[Laughter]
[53:35]
[Laughing] And the judge literally looked at him –
[Laughter]
Looked at him like this – the whole place was dying, I’m dying: I’m turning red, I’m laughing. Oh, that’s really just one story. Just don’t tell him any garbage like that. The best thing you can do is tell him, “I screwed up.” That’s the best thing you could do.
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 23
I really believe that there are some faults, you know? Every system – no system is perfect. I believe that he (I can’t speak for everybody involved in drug court), but I believe that Judge Willmore really does want to help people. I really do believe that. I believe that he is really personally invested in it.
So when he says, “I can handle a drug addict, but I can’t handle a criminal,” he means it. He’s not going to sit there and let you lie to him only so many times. But if you tell him the truth, and you say, “You know what? I screwed up and I did some dope,” or, “I used,” you’re not going to be in that much trouble, you know (as long as you’re not going in every week and saying that). You know?
AD: So speaking of criminality and addiction, what would you tell someone who knew next to nothing about addiction or drug court, and you know, may have some prior stigmas that they attach to drug addiction and criminality? What would you say to people who have no idea about this world of drug court and addiction?
J: What would I say to them?
AD: What would you want them to know?
[55:40]
J: I kind of hate that. I know what I would want them to know, but I hate it because I’m not one of those drug addicts that make excuses for what I do (or what I did), right?
It is a disease, and yeah – they should know that. At least that’s what they say, it’s a disease, right? I think a drug addict in the midst of active addiction is not the person that he or she is. I’ve met (obviously) countless drug addicts in my life, and some of them are the best people I’ve ever met in my life, you know. Some of them aren’t.
But there is usually a lot of talent amongst drug addicts. Going back, a lot of musicians, artists, things like that; they seem to think with that side of their minds more, you know? I don’t know.
And then what would I say to them about drug court? I would say that it’s something, as a community, they should get behind; because typically when you take a drug addict and you throw them in prison – one thing I’ll say about Utah, is you can get in trouble really easily here, right? Because there’s a lot of cops – and you always hear people say that, but on the other hand it’s one of the safest cities in the country, right?
You could get in a lot of trouble here; but if you get in trouble here, they’re not that likely to just say, “Screw you,” and toss you right to prison. They really do try to take an addict and help him.
[57:53]
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 24
So I would probably urge the community, if drug addicts were something that they were worried about, or anything like that – I would urge them to get behind a program like that, you know?
Just like anything else, the success rate probably isn’t high. I used after drug court – I had surgery, and that kind of set me over the edge a little bit. So the success rate is low, but it’s higher than it would be without it, let’s say. You know?
Yeah; same with AA, NA. You know, the percentage of people that go to their first meeting and stay clean for the rest of their lives – that’s almost non-existent, but it happens, you know.
AD: Is there anything else that you’d like to tell us, that we didn’t bring up?
J: I don’t know. I think drug court – I think the most important thing about it is you have to go – you either have to do meetings (because if you don’t go to meetings and get your stuff signed, you’ve got to go to jail, right?).
So I think the most important thing it does is one: it gives a drug addict that’s been just living on the streets, or whatever they’re doing, from house to house, or hotel – it forces them to have structure, it forces them to learn how to live life again. And it puts a lot of people that would have never heard about any other program (outside program) – it puts them in touch with other programs, right?
[60:16]
I think that’s important.
JD: Other social service programs?
J: Yeah; well like I don’t want to just say AA or NA, because there’s other things that people do to stay clean, you know. They could maybe stay involved with the drug court groups; they have Addicts and Athletes now; you know what I mean? Where they have meetings where there are sports involved, but they’re all addicts getting together to do it. It’s introducing them to a new world, almost – you know that I mean?
I don’t know; it did me a lot of good. I really can’t say anything bad about it. I do think some of the sanctions are petty (I really do), but at the same time it’s kind of tricky (like I said before), it’s tricky to decipher who is doing the right thing, who is doing the wrong thing, without certain rules being in place.
And [laughing] the truth of the matter is, you’re signing a piece of paper that’s giving your rights up; you really are. So I mean, you can say whatever you want, but you signed your rights away so you could stay out of prison (initially) – that’s what people do, right?
Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 25
If you have an opportunity to better yourself [laughing] in the real world or in prison – I don’t know how many people – there’s some people that say, “No, just send me to prison.” But I don’t know – I don’t understand that; I don’t.
I don’t know; I could say that I’ve been clean over a year. I had to use again; when I started using again I used for a year and a half – so it could happen to anyone. I don’t know.
I don’t know if I have anything else to say.
[62:25]
AD: You know what – there is one question –
J: Yeah?
AD: One more question –
J: Yeah?
AD: I forgot to ask you, because you’re really well-spoken, and so I wanted to ask your thoughts on jail (or prison) –
J: Um-hmm?
AD: I don’t know if you’ve been to prison, or just jail – but what to tell people who have no idea about that world, what’s jail like? How it feels, what did you experience there?
J: Well I’ll tell you this: people here [laughing] should feel lucky that they’re from here and they’re not going to jail like in New Jersey or California, or things like that, because it’s a lot different. It’s a lot different. In fact, I’m pretty sure that jails there are worse than prison here, you know?
I don’t know; it’s not for everybody. There’s some people that can go to jail and that could absolutely ruin their lives in a sense where, you know, they start getting comfortable doing that, right? But if they don’t develop a hard streak, they could be – it really can become just a scared victim, right? For a long time in your life.
I’m lucky I’m not that kind of person. But I don’t know – if there’s any way to avoid jail. And the other thing about it, honestly, is it is friggin boring. I mean, bottom line it’s boring, the food’s horrible, it’s a waste of time – it’s a waste of time.
What could be more of a waste of your time in life than jail (or prison)? Nothing, right? Nothing. I mean, you’re sitting there and you have to devise a little, you know, routine to make what time go by – to make time go by as fast as possible. In the real world sometimes you don’t have enough time in the day, right? I don’t know. Cache Valley Drug Court Oral History: John Page 26
I don’t know, unless you want to be a gangster and you think it’s cool, then go ahead. Right? [Laughs] I don’t know.
RW: I agree with Andrew: you’re very well-spoken. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experiences with us.
J: You’re welcome; welcome.
RW: Do you still feel comfortable signing the release?
J: Yes, it’s fine [laughs]; yeah.
RW: Thank you; I’m going to turn this off.
[End recording – 64:59]